Cancer Cells Appear Adept
At Dodging Some Therapies

On paper, the new targeted therapies for cancer are a slam dunk: They take lethal aim at molecules and biochemical pathways that allow cancer cells to proliferate, spread and avoid self-destructing.

Yet even the most vaunted targeted therapies being described at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research this weekend have disappointingly low success rates. ImClone's Erbitux, for instance, shrinks only 10% of...